The Embeddedness of Social Entrepreneurship: Understanding Variation across Local Communities

Social enterprise organizations (SEOs) arise from entrepreneurial activities with the aim of achieving social goals. SEOs have been identified as alternative and/or complementary to the actions of governments and international organizations to address poverty and poverty-related social needs. Using a number of illustrative cases, we explore how variation of local institutional mechanisms shapes the local “face of poverty” in different communities and how this relates to variations in the emergence and strategic orientations of SEOs. We develop a model of the productive opportunity space for SEOs as a basis of and an inspiration for further scholarly inquiry. 1 Senior Lecturer, Strategic Management, IESE 2 Associate Professor, Strategic Management, IESE 3 Harvard Business School 4 Queen’s School of Business Note: Forthcoming in Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2011).